Codebook for the RELGSP



Extended Notes for Instructors for Exercise STAT7S The data set used in this exercise is gss14_subset_for_classes_STATISTICS.sav which is a subset of the 2014 General Social Survey (GSS). Some of the variables in the GSS have been recoded to make them easier to use and some new variables have been created. The data may be downloaded at this site. You have permission to use this exercise and to revise it to fit your needs. Please send a copy of any revision to the author.The General Social Survey is a large, national probability sample of adults (18 years and older) living in the United States conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. The GSS started in 1972 and was conducted annually through 1994 and biannually since then. Many of the questions in the GSS have been repeated from previous years providing important trend data. The most recent GSS was 2014. The sample size for the 2014 survey was approximately 2,500. This exercise is based on a subset of 218 variables from the 866 variables in the 2014 GSS. The data have been weighted according to the instructions from the National Opinion Research Center. More information about the GSS can be found on the NORC - General Social Survey website. At the website you will find the documentation for the survey, survey questionnaires, a bibliography, useful Frequently Asked Questions, and more. You can also download the complete GSS in either SPSS or Stata format. You can create a free account on the GSS Data Explorer where you can search the GSS by variable and by topic and even analyze the data online.For this exercise we have renamed the variables to make it easier for students to find related variables. For example, the first seven variables in the GSS deal with abortion (a for short). These seven variables start with a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, and a7 which are followed by an underscore (_). Following the underscore is the name of the variable from the GSS (abany, abdefect, abhlth, abnomore, abpoor, absingle, and abrape). Thus the first variable is named a1_abany and the second variable is a2_abdefect. The advantage of this system is that students can easily find categories of variables that have the same focus. At the same time, you also know the name of the variable in the GSS and can easily use the NORC codebook. Looking the variable up in the NORC codebook will give you the exact question wording.There are 26 categories of variables which are listed below.abortion (a) – 7 variablesaged (aged) – 1 variable which asks if the aged should live with their childrenc (crime) – 3 variables which ask about fear of crime, capital punishment and the courtsci (confidence in institutions) – 13 variables asking about confidence in American institutions such as organized labor, the press, and televisiondemographics (d) – 30 variables including, for example, age, sex, racefinancial (f) – 11 variables which include income, satisfaction with financial situation and various opinion questionsguns (g) – 5 questions which include gun ownership and gun permitshelping others (help) – 12 questions focusing on the importance of helping others versus taking care of one’s selfhappiness (hap) – 4 questions dealing with happiness and satisfaction focusing on marriage, life in general, and job satisfactionhealth (hlth) – 2 questions including perceived state of respondent’s health and the importance of providing health care for everyoneimmigration (i) – 8 opinion questions on immigration and immigrantsm (marijuana) – 1 questions asking about the legalization of marijuananational spending (nat) – 29 questions asking whether we are spending too little, too much, or about the right amount on various issues such as defense, crime, and the environment. Embedded within these questions is a true experiment in which question wording is randomly assigned to respondents. political (p) – 9 questions including party identification, political views, voting, and other opinion questions.political efficacy (pe) – 4 questions asking whether the respondent thinks that they can influence what the government does and the degree to which they are informed about political issuespornography (porn) – 1 question asking about how the distribution of pornography should be controlledreligion (r) – 21 questions including religious preference, religiosity, and opinion on various religious issuessex (s) – 13 questions asking about gender, sexual activity and opinion about homosexuality and sexual behaviorssociability (soc) – 4 questions about how much the respondent interacts with otherssex roles (sr) – 5 opinion questions about the roles of men and womensuicide (sui) – 5 questions asking about whether people should have the right to take their own life and whether patients with an incurable disease ought to be allowed to dietolerance (t) – 18 questions about whether different groups of people (militarists, atheists, racists, communists, homosexuals, and anti-American Muslim clergy) ought to be allowed to make a public speech, have their books in libraries, and teach in collegestrust, fairness (tf) – 5 questions asking whether people can be trusted and fairness issuestelevision (tv) – 1 questions asking how many hours per day respondents watch tv weight (w) – 3 weight variables. We’re using W1_WTSS to weight the data so the data more accurately represent the populationyear (year) – the year (2014) of the surveyThe goal of this exercise is to explore hypothesis testing and the paired-samples t test. The exercise also gives you practice in using COMPARE MEANS. The online SPSS book mentioned earlier would be a good introduction to the use of SPSS commands. I have included in the exercise where students can find help with this SPSS command in this online book. This exercise isn’t a comprehensive discussion of independent-samples t tests. For example, it doesn’t discuss the assumptions that you make when using this test. You may want to add your own materials to this exercise or delete sections that go into more detail than you want.To avoid students overwriting the data file, it is important that you make the data file a read only file.Included in the exercise are the SPSS syntax needed for the exercise and the SPSS output which includes the syntax. These, of course, should be removed when preparing the exercise for the students. Feel free to revise the exercise in any way you want. Just recognize the source of the original exercise. Please send me a copy of the revised exercise so I can see how others are using it.The data set includes a large number of variables that are not used in this particular exercise. I’m preparing other exercises that will use this same data set and will focus on using SPSS and exploring other areas of interest which include the following.opinions about abortionreligious preference and religiosity and other aspects of religiontrust and fairnesstolerance towards those who hold unpopular viewsconfidence in various institutionssexual behavior and opinionsopinions about immigration and immigrantsfear of crime and opinions about capital punishment and the courtssex rolesopinions about the redistribution of wealthpolitical behavior and opinionspolitical efficacy conditions under which suicide would be allowedopinions about national spendinggun ownership and gun controlsociabilityhappiness and satisfaction with various aspects of lifewillingness to help othershealth and availability of health carelegalization of marijuanasocial control of pornographytelevision viewingSome of the exercises will also focus on various methodological and statistical issues including the following.developing hypothesesanalysis of two-variable and three-variable relationshipsspuriousnessmeasurement validitymeasurement reliabilitypercentagesChi Squaremeasures of association (Lambda, Cramer’s V, Gamma, Somers’ d, Goodman and Kruskal’s tau-b, Goodman and Kruskal’s tau-c)interpreting data tablesSome of the exercises will focus on critical thinking skills such as the following.developing arguments to support your hypothesesdeveloping tables (called dummy tables) that show what your tables should look like if your hypothesis is truedeciding if your data support your hypothesisThese exercises will be posted to this site as they are created.If you would like to contact me, please email me at ednelson@csufresno.edu. I’m Professor Emeritus at California State University, Fresno in the Sociology department. I taught research methods, statistics, and critical thinking before retiring and now teach a critical thinking course part time. ................
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